Widespread Microsoft Outage Disrupts Global Services, Including in India

On Thursday, a major outage affected several Microsoft services globally, including Bing Search, Copilot, and ChatGPT, with significant impact reported in India.

Users flooded social media to report the disruptions, which also affected third-party services such as the search engine DuckDuckGo, which relies on Microsoft's infrastructure. Indian users in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai experienced difficulties accessing these services.

According to the outage tracking website Downdetector, 57 percent of users reported issues accessing the Bing website, 34 percent faced problems with the search function, and 9 percent encountered login troubles.

"It's not just you: Microsoft's services are down in some regions. #Bing is down, #Copilot/Copilot in Windows is down. DuckDuckGo is not working because it uses Bing. Similarly, ChatGPT's internet search is also down," one user posted on X.

Another user wrote, "Microsoft Copilot and Bing Down: Users Encounter Connection Errors," while someone else commented, "Anyone else having problems with Bing? I keep getting this today."

Although Microsoft has not released an official statement regarding the outage, it appears that most services have since been restored and are now accessible to users worldwide.

In a separate development, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has fined LinkedIn India, its parent company Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella, and eight other individuals for violating significant beneficial owner norms under the Companies Act. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in December 2016. According to a 63-page order from the Registrar of Companies (NCT of Delhi & Haryana), LinkedIn India and the individuals violated the Significant Beneficial Owner (SBO) norms under the Companies Act, 2013.

Satya Nadella and Ryan Roslansky, identified as the Significant Beneficial Owners (SBOs) of the company, are liable for penalties under section 90(10) of the Act for failing to report as required by section 90(1). Roslansky was appointed as the global CEO of LinkedIn Corporation on June 1, 2020, reporting directly to Nadella. Section 90 of the Act mandates companies to disclose SBO details.